THERE are certain winter days when bed and bath seem to be the only two tolerable places in the world.

Katty Winslow, on waking up the next morning, that is, on Saturday, the seventh of January, knew at once, though she was snuggled down deep in her warm bed, that it was very much colder than it had been the evening before. She shivered a little, telling herself that perhaps she was not in as good condition as usual, for she had only just come back from spending Christmas and the New Year away.

The faithful Harber drew back the curtains, letting in gleams of red winter sun. And then she brought her mistress a nice cup of hot tea, and a pretty, wadded, pale-blue bed wrap.

Katty sat up. "I'm not in any hurry to-day," she said. "I'll ring when I want breakfast." And after having taken her tea she lay down again, and began to think.

Oddly, or perhaps naturally, enough, her thoughts turned to Godfrey Pavely. She wondered vaguely where he was, and if he would be home to-day.

There had been a kind of half arrangement between them that they would travel down from London together on the Thursday afternoon. That would have meant for Katty the benefit of The Chase motor—a pleasant as well as an economical plan—and its owner's company as far as Rosedean.

But Katty had not found Godfrey Pavely at the London station, though she had lingered about up to the very last moment before taking, regretfully, a third-class ticket. On arriving at Pewsbury she had also waited some minutes in the vague hope that Godfrey might have dashed up just as the train was leaving—not that he was apt to dash at any time, for he was always very careful of himself, and had a due regard for his personal dignity. But there was no sign of the familiar figure, and so Katty had had to take a fly—a slow, smelly, expensive fly—out to Rosedean.

Yesterday, Friday, had been a rather tiresome, dull day, spent in hearing from Harber all the disagreeable things which had happened while she had been away—how Harber's stupid, untrained girl-help had gone and broken a rather nice piece of china in the drawing-room, and also how it had come to pass that there were two slates off the roof.

Katty had rather expected Godfrey would come in, if only to apologise for having failed her during the journey. But the afternoon had gone slowly by, and at last she felt sure, knowing his ways, that he had not yet come home. Something must have delayed him—something, perhaps, connected with that pleasant Portuguese gambling concession which was to bring them both such a lot of money. But if that were so, she would almost certainly receive from him this morning one of his rather long, explanatory letters. Of late Godfrey had fallen into the way of writing to Katty almost every day when they were apart.

Though Mrs. Winslow meant to keep the fact strictly to herself—for it was one that might have somewhat surprised even the unsuspicious Laura—she and Godfrey had actually spent a long day together during their dual absence from home.

It had fallen out as such pleasant meetings sometimes do fall out, very naturally and innocently, just a week ago to-day.

Katty, on her way from the south to stay with her friends, the Haworths, had run up against Godfrey Pavely at King's Cross. That had been a really extraordinary coincidence, and one of which it would have been foolish not to take advantage. For it turned out that he also was going to Yorkshire, and on the business in which they were both interested, to spend a night with the ex-money-lender, Greville Howard. That gentleman, it seemed, was making certain difficulties about the matter—he wanted to stay his hand till he had seen the French bankers who were concerned with the affair. As he spent each spring in the south of France, that would not be such a difficulty as it seemed. Still, it was a bore, and the other had felt he had better go and see him.

After a pleasant journey together, as they were steaming into York station Godfrey suddenly asked: "Must you go on to your friends at once? Couldn't you telephone to them to meet you by a later train? I'm in no hurry." And, smilingly, she had consented.

Of late Katty's heart had become very soft to her old friend. For one thing he was being so good to her in the matter of money. That two hundred pounds he had given to her some weeks ago had been followed by two fifty-pound notes. And yet, though she knew poor Godfrey was quite unaware of it, her original purpose—the purpose which had so distressed him, and which, as she well knew, had induced in him such extraordinary and unusual generosity—had not faltered at all. Katty still meant to cut the cable, and start a new life elsewhere.

Rosedean was all very well; her close friendship with Godfrey Pavely was all very well; though of late she had been disagreeably aware that Godfrey was ashamed—ashamed of giving her that money, ashamed of his increasing fondness for her, ashamed also of—well, of other little things which sometimes happened, things which Katty thought quite unimportant, which she regarded as part of the payment due from her to Godfrey. But she realised more rather than less, as time went on, that if she wanted to make anything of her life there must come a change. She would wait a while, wait perhaps till next autumn—so she had told those kind friends of hers, the Haworths.

Katty was sometimes surprised to find how sorry she was that things had not fallen out otherwise. But she had always tried, in all the great things of life, to look the truth squarely in the face. Only once had she been caught doing anything else—and that, as we know, had been years and years ago. She was not likely to make that sort of mistake now. She had come to see, with a rather painful clearness, that Godfrey and Laura, however ill they got on together, were not the sort of people to lend themselves to any kind of juggling with the law to obtain their liberty.

But she had been disappointed in Oliver Tropenell. She had felt in him accumulated forces of that explosive energy which leads to determined action—also she had thought that Gillie would do something.

But the two had disappeared together almost immediately after her talk with Laura's brother. That was over ten weeks ago now, and neither had given any sign of life since.

But Katty intended to keep up with Godfrey. For one thing she was keenly interested in that business in which they were, in a sense, both engaged. Also one never can tell what life—and death—may not bring forth. Whatever happened, the link between herself and Godfrey was too strong ever to be broken. Even if she married again, which she supposed she would do some time or other, there seemed no reason, to her, at any rate, why she should not keep up with Godfrey. He was her trustee now, as well as her oldest friend.

So it was that she had very willingly assented to do him the trifling favour of spending some further hours in his company.

As they wandered about the old city, and lingered awhile in the great Minster, neither of them said a word that the whole world might not have overheard. They visited some of the curiosity shops for which York is famed, and Katty's companion, with that new generosity which sat on him so strangely, bought a beautiful, and very costly, old cut-glass pendant for Rosedean.

They did not meet a soul that either of them knew, excepting, yes, stop——After they had said goodbye (Godfrey, with a rather shocked look on his face, for Katty, imprudent, foolish Katty, had woman-like seemed to expect that he would kiss her in a corner of an empty waiting-room where at any moment they might have been surprised by some acquaintance of one or the other of them!)—after, as arranged, they had said good-bye, and Katty was engaged in taking her ticket for the branch line station for which she was bound, a curious thing happened.

She suddenly heard a voice, a man's voice, which sounded pleasantly familiar.

Who could it be? The association evoked was wholly agreeable, but Katty could not place, in the chambers of her memory, the owner of the rather peculiar accents which were engaged in asking when the next train back to London would start.

She had turned round quickly, only to see a small queue of people behind her, among them surely the owner of that peculiar voice. But no, she did not know any one there—though among them a man attracted her attention, for the simple reason that he was staring at her very hard. He was obviously a foreigner, for his skin was olive-tinted, and he had a small, black, pointed beard. He stared at Katty with an air of rather insolent admiration. And then he broke away from the queue, and walked quickly off, out of the booking-office.

Katty always enjoyed admiration, whatever its source, and yet a queer kind of shiver had gone through her when this impertinent stranger's glance rested full on her face. She had had the odious sensation that the man saw something to be jeered at, as well as admired, in her neat and attractive self.

At last, reluctantly, Katty got up and went into her well-warmed comfortable bathroom. It was nice to be home again, at no one's orders but her own. After she had dressed, she rang, and very soon came her breakfast, daintily served by the devoted Harber, also the one daily paper she felt she could afford to take.

Katty was one of the many women to whom the daily picture-paper supplied a long-felt, if unconscious, want. It gave her just the amount of news, and the kind of news, that her busy mind, absorbed in other things, could assimilate comfortably. She was no reader, though sometimes she would manage to gallop through some book that all the world was talking about. But newspapers had always bored her. Still, she had become very fond of the paper she now held in her hand. It only cost a halfpenny a day, and Katty liked small, sensible economies.

That liking of hers was one of the links which bound her to Godfrey Pavely, but unlike Godfrey, Katty did not care for money for money's sake. She only liked money for what money could buy. And sometimes, when she was in a cheerful, mischievous mood, she would tell herself, with a smile, that if ever her Castle in Spain turned out to have been built on a solid foundation—if ever, that is, she became Godfrey Pavely's wife, she would know how to spend the money he had garnered so carefully. She felt pretty sure, deep in her heart, that should such an unlikely thing come to pass, she would know how to "manage" Godfrey, and that, if surprised, he would not really mind what she did. She always got good value out of everything she acquired, and that would remain true if, instead of spending pence, she was ever able to spend pounds.

A little before eleven, just as Katty was beginning to think it was time for her to finish dressing, she heard the gate of her domain open, and the voice of little Alice Pavely rise up through the still, frosty air, mingling with the deeper, gentler tones of Laura.

It was an odd thing, considering that the two women were at any rate in theory intimate friends, that Laura very, very seldom came to Rosedean. In fact Katty could not remember a single time when Laura had come in the morning, an uninvited, unexpected guest. So suddenly poor Katty felt a little chill of apprehension; she got up from her chair, and waited....

The front door was opened at once. Then came Harber's hurrying footfalls on the staircase—and, simultaneously, the garden door at the back of the house swung to. Laura had evidently sent her little girl out of doors, into the garden. What could she be coming to say?

Quickly Katty examined her conscience. No, there was nothing that Laura could possibly have found out. As to that half day spent with Godfrey in York, Laura was surely the last woman to mind—and if she did mind, she was quite the last woman to say anything about it!

There came a knock at the door: then Harber's voice, "Mrs. Pavely wants to know, ma'am, if she can come up and speak to you, just for a minute."

"Ask Mrs. Pavely to come up," said Katty, pleasantly.

A minute later, Laura walked forward into the room. It was the first time she had been in Katty's bedroom since Rosedean had been first furnished.

She looked round her with a smile. "Why, Katty," she exclaimed, "how charming and pretty you've made it all! You've added quite a number of things since I was here last."

"Only the curtains," said Katty quickly (oh, how relieved she felt!), "only the curtains, and perhaps that arm-chair, Laura."

"Yes, I suppose that is all, but somehow it looks more."

Laura looked exactly as she always looked, rather paler perhaps than usual, but then Laura was pale. She had that peculiar clear, warm whiteness of skin that is compared by its admirers to a camellia; this morning, her lovely, deep blue eyes looked tired, as if she had been sleeping badly.

"I've really come to ask if you know where Godfrey is? We expected him home on Thursday. Then he sent a telephone message saying that he couldn't be back till yesterday. No time was mentioned, but as he had a lot of appointments at the Bank we of course thought he would be back early. I myself sat up for him last night till after the last train, but now, this morning, I've heard nothing from him—and Mr. Privet has heard nothing."

"What an odd thing!" exclaimed Katty. She really did think it very odd, for Godfrey was the most precise of men.

She waited a moment, then said truthfully, "No, I haven't the slightest idea where he is. He wrote me a line late last week about a little investment of mine. I've got the letter somewhere."

Katty was trying to make up her mind as to whether she should say anything concerning that joint journey to York. At last she decided not to do so. It had nothing to do with Godfrey's absence now.

"Doesn't Mr. Privet know where he is?" she asked. "That really is very odd, Laura."

"Of course Mr. Privet knows where Godfrey was up to Thursday morning. He stayed where he always does stay when in London, at the Hungerford Hotel, in Trafalgar Square. He's always stayed there—they know him, and make him very comfortable. But Mr. Privet telephoned through there yesterday—as a matter of fact I've only just heard this—and they told him that Godfrey had left the hotel on Thursday morning. But the extraordinary thing is," and now Laura really did look somewhat troubled—"that they were expecting him back there to pack, to leave for here—at least so the manager understood him to say. He went out in the morning, and then he didn't come back, as they thought he would do, to luncheon. All his things are still at the Hungerford Hotel."

Katty began to feel a little uneasy. "Perhaps he's had an accident," she said. "After all, accidents do happen. Have you done anything, Laura?"

Laura shook her head. "What seems to make the theory of an accident unlikely is that telephone message. You see, he telephoned quite late on Thursday saying that he would stay in town over the night. But he didn't send a similar message to the Bank, as any one knowing Godfrey would certainly have expected him to do, and he didn't let them know at the Hungerford Hotel that he would be away for the night. It's all rather mysterious."

"Yes, it is," said Katty.

"I wonder—" Laura grew a little pink—"I wonder," she said again, "if you know on what business Godfrey went up to town? Mr. Privet would rather like to know that."

And then Katty grew a little pink, too. She hesitated. "No, I don't know what business took him away. You forget that I myself have been away for quite a long time—I only came back on Thursday afternoon."

"Why, of course!" exclaimed Laura. "I forgot that. You've been away nearly a fortnight, haven't you?"

"Yes. First I went right down to the south, and then up to Yorkshire."

Somehow she felt impelled to say this.

But Katty's visits were of no interest to Laura at any time, least of all just now. "Well, I thought I'd come and just ask you on the chance," she said.

She got up, and for a moment or two the two young women stood together not far from the bow window of Katty's bedroom.

Suddenly Katty exclaimed, "Why, there's Oliver Tropenell! What an extraordinary thing! I thought he was abroad."

"He came back yesterday morning," said Laura quietly.

Katty gave her visitor a quick, searching look. But there was never anything to see in Laura's face.

"Hadn't I better call out to him? He's evidently on his way to The Chase. Hadn't I better say you're here?"

And, as Laura seemed to hesitate, she threw open the window. "Mr. Tropenell?" she called out, in her clear, ringing voice.

The man who was striding past Rosedean, walking very quickly, stopped rather unwillingly. Then he looked up, and when he saw who it was that was standing by Mrs. Winslow, he turned in through the gate, and rang the door-bell.

"Will you go down to him, Laura? I can't come as I am."

"I'll wait while you put on your dress. We can tell him to go out into the garden with Alice."

She bent over the broad, low bar of the window, and Oliver, gazing up at her, thought of Rossetti's lines: Heaven to him was where Laura was.

"Will you go through the house into the garden? Alice is there. We'll be down soon."

Katty lingered a little, though she only had to put on her blouse, her skirt, and a sports coat. "I feel quite anxious about Godfrey," she said hesitatingly.

And Laura, in an absent voice, said, "Yes, so do I. But of course by this time he may be at the Bank. He's quite fond of that very early morning train. He often took it last summer."

"Yes, but now he would have had to get up in the dark to take it."

"I don't think Godfrey would mind that."

At last the two went downstairs, and out into the garden where Oliver Tropenell and the child were talking together.

Oliver turned round, and after shaking hands with Mrs. Winslow, he asked Laura an abrupt question. "Did Godfrey come back last evening after all?"

Katty looked at him inquisitively. Then he had been at The Chase yesterday?

Laura shook her head. "No, I sat up for him till midnight. I thought it almost certain that he'd taken the last train. But we've had no news of him at all. Perhaps he's at the Bank by now—I'll ring up as soon as I get home. Come, Alice, my dear."

Katty heard Oliver Tropenell say in a low voice: "May I walk with you?"

And then Katty cut in: "You'll let me know, Laura, won't you, if you have any special news? Of course I don't want you to let me know if Godfrey's safe at the Bank—I'm not so anxious as all that!" She laughed, her rather affected, little ringing laugh. "But if there's any other news—especially if he's had an accident of any sort—well, I should like to know."

"Of course I'll send you word." And then Laura roused herself. "Why shouldn't you come up to lunch, Katty? I wish you would! And then I could tell you anything I've heard this morning."

"Thanks, I'd like to do that. I'll follow you in about an hour. I've things to do, and letters to write, now."

She saw the three off, and once more, as had so often been the case in the past, her heart was filled with envy—envy, and a certain excitement.

Oliver Tropenell's return home just now was a complication. She felt sure it would upset Godfrey, but she could not quite tell how much. She wondered if Gilbert Baynton had come back too. She rather hoped that he had.

She wrote her letters, and then, so timing her departure as to arrive exactly at one o'clock, for at The Chase luncheon was at one, she went off, meeting, as she expected to do, Oliver Tropenell on his way home to Freshley.

"Any news?" she called out. And he shook his head. "No—no news at all." Then he added slowly: "But I don't see that there's any cause for alarm. Pavely telephoned the day before yesterday saying he was being detained in town."

"Still, it's odd he didn't write to Laura," said Katty meditatively. "As a rule he writes to Laura every day when he is in London."

She knew that was one of those half-truths which are more misleading than a lie. Godfrey was fond of sending home postcards containing directions as to this or that connected with the house or garden. But Katty saw the instinctive frown which came over Oliver Tropenell's face, and she felt pleased. She enjoyed giving this odd, sensitive, secretive man tiny pin-pricks. She had never really liked him, and now she positively disliked him. Why had he gone away just when things were looking promising? And, having gone away for so long, why had he now come back?

"How is Mr. Baynton?" she asked, smiling.

"He's gone back to Mexico."

And now Katty was really surprised. "Has he indeed?" she exclaimed. "And without seeing Laura again? I'm rather sorry for that!" And as Oliver made no answer, she went on a trifle maliciously: "I suppose you will be going off soon, too?"

He hesitated, a very long time it seemed to her, before he answered, "Yes, I suppose I shall. But things go on all right over there as long as one of us is there."

Then, with a not over civil abruptness, he left her.

Katty stayed most of that cold wintry Saturday afternoon with Laura, and as was her way when she chose to do so, she made herself very pleasant to both the mother and child, and that though little Alice did not like her.

A little before four she asked Laura if she might telephone herself to the Bank, and Laura eagerly assented.

Explaining that she was really speaking for Mrs. Pavely, Katty had quite a long chat with Mr. Privet. She and the old head clerk had always been good friends, though they met seldom. He could remember her as a beautiful child, and then as the popular, because the always good humoured and pleasant-spoken, belle of Pewsbury.

"Yes, I feel very anxious indeed, Mrs. Winslow! I've been wondering whether it wouldn't be a good thing to communicate with the London police, if we don't have any news of Mr. Pavely to-morrow. Could you ascertain for me the exact feelings of Mrs. Pavely?"

"I agree with you, Mr. Privet, for after all, accidents do happen! Hold the line a moment. I'll go and inquire."

She hurried off to Laura's boudoir. "Mr. Privet suggests that the London police should be communicated with—if we don't have news of Godfrey by to-morrow morning."

Laura looked up, startled. "Oh, Katty, don't you think that would make him very angry—if he's all right, I mean?"

"Perhaps it would," Katty agreed uncomfortably.

She went back to the telephone. "Mrs. Pavely thinks we'd better wait a little longer before saying anything to the police," she called out.

And thus it was through Laura, as Katty reminded herself in days to come, that two more precious days were lost.